The NDTV legal suit against TAM has unleashed a huge amount of epiphany on the unreliable nature of television ratings in this country. Panel sizes are all wrong! Data is not reliable! Yes, industry bodies have been trying to work together, if at all that is possible, to build a more robust system, but it is behind schedule, blah.. blah.. blah.
What in fact begs the question is that client organisations have been spending vast sums of money through the television medium, ostensibly guided by a faulty TAM system. Does this mean that client organisations (and the media agencies) have been in a blinkered condition for all these years?
I beg to disagree.
Most large companies have their foot soldiers scattered all over the country. And these foot soldiers, sales reps or often referred to as the roving Managing Directors, are the eyes and ears of the company.
Let me illustrate this with a story from my days in marketing. It was I think in the early 80s. Those days you had to buy TV advertising through individual kendras and there were four of them open for advertising: Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. This was a little before the 1982 Asian Games, I think, and there was a lot of excitement around the low power transmitters that the government was setting up around the country. Advertisers used to flock to programmes like Chaya Geet and ChitraHaar. Boots Company, my employer, started using TV for their brands Strepsils, Coldarin and Burnol.
The company pulled out some funds from cinema advertising to plough it into this new medium. We started getting some good feedback and were hoping that one day TVwill be able to reach beyond the top four cities. We were given to understand that the big four cities had high power transmitters that took their signals beyond the metro city to a bit of the hinterland as well. But we were not sure how far the signals travelled. We had read about the LPTs or low power transmitters being set up, but were given to understand, by the powers that be at Doordarshan Head Quarters that LPTs were not permitted to carry any advertising.
Marketing companies, especially pharmaceutical companies have a system of cycle meetings where the medical/sales reps got to meet the bright young product managers to tell them how their strategy was not working in the market place and only more schemes (and samples) will save the brand. During that particular year three of my colleagues had a single point agenda: Is TV advertising working?
At every one of the cycle meetings held across 20 different cities, we badgered the reps about TV and what they saw at home, and will television change their lives? In our discussions we stumbled upon a hidden truth. Some of the reps from small towns in North India were truly appreciative of the TV ads of Strepsils and Coldarin (remember the MGM Lion/ ‘Kya Haal Bana Rakha Hai’ Coldarin ads?]. We were quite perplexed. We had been told that the 174 LPTs were not relaying any ads. They were supposed to switch off when ChitraHaar started. But what we heard was that the LPTs were merrily airing the programmes with the ads. We drilled deeper to find out which Kendra ads were being picked up by these LPTs: And lo behold it was the Delhi ads.
We had unearthed a secret. The more you advertised on Delhi Kendra, the more exposure you got across the country. For free. I remember calling Asha Suvarna from Clarion to get her to make an air dash to Delhi to buy all we could on Delhi Kendra.
It took Doordardhan almost six months to issue a special Delhi + LPT rate. And till then the companies who had real eyes and ears in the market managed to score a big win over their competitors, by exploiting the power of Delhi & LPTs.
Now what has all this got to do with the current TAM imbroglio? I believe no system of measurement will be perfect. The best measure of reach or GRPs or TRPs is consumer response. The smart marketing companies are not being guided blindly by TAM, they use a judicious mix of TAM and their own network of ‘eyes and ears’, market research etc.
Yes, we can use better quality data. Yes, the industry bodies will evolve a better system. That said, let me assure you that the quest for the perfect TRP is second only to the quest for the Holy Grail.
The author is ED & CEO, Draftfcb Ulka Advertising, Mumbai
